The placing of display advertisements near consumer shelf space is generally known. Of late, retailers and advertisers have placed display ads on surfaces associated with the door handles of refrigeration coolers. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,383,654 describes an assembly that replaces entirely a cooler door handle, such as on the cooler aisle of a grocery or convenience store. On the assembly, there is a surface within a cavity that allows the interchanging of graphic displays, including advertisements. The assembly is mounted directly to the door itself after the pre-existing handle is removed.
There are several advantages to these kinds of assemblies. They allow ads to receive consumer attention at or near the moment of purchase. They also allow for quick and easy advertisement changes.
What is needed is an assembly that does not require replacement of a door handle. What is also needed is a capacity to mate a display advertising surface with the wide variety of legacy door handles that currently exist at retail point of sale locations. What is further needed is a capacity to mate a display advertising surface with a door handle type that does not permit a bracket to surround its axis for the full three hundred sixty degrees. What is further needed is electronic apparatus that supplies visual, audible and/or olfactory stimuli to make the display advertising surfaces more effective.
It is also known that consumers have long installed stainless steel appliances in their homes. One aspect of such appliances is that the fronts do not attract magnets, at least to the extent that previous metallic appliances did. Where consumers used to be able to attach notes, grocery lists or other papers to fronts of their appliances such as refrigerators, they are generally no longer able to do so with stainless steel versions. What is needed is the ability to add a marking surface to the front of an appliance.